Device to Device (D2D) communication allows direct communication between different User Equipments (UEs). During the D2D communication a transmitting D2D UE can transmit data packets to a group of D2D UEs or broadcast data packets to all the D2D UEs or send unicast data packets to a specific D2D UE. D2D communication between the transmitter and receiver(s) is connectionless in nature i.e. there is no connection setup (or no control messages are exchanged) between the transmitter and receiver before the transmitter starts transmitting the data packets. During the transmission, the transmitter includes the source ID and the destination ID in the data packets. The source ID is set to the UE ID of the transmitter. The destination ID is of the intended recipient of the transmitted packet. The destination ID indicates whether the packet is a broadcast packet or a unicast packet or a packet intended for a group.
A D2D communication may involve transmission of different traffic types (e.g. ARP, IP etc) to the same or different destination, wherein packets belonging to different types of traffic needs to be processed differently in transmitting UE and receiving UE involved in D2D communication. In the transmitter, higher layer (IP Protocol) provides the IP packets to lower layer (PDCP/RLC) for transmitting to one or more UEs. Lower layer processes the packet and transmits the processed packet on D2D communication channel. The receiver receives the packet on D2D communication channel. The lower layer (PDCP/RLC) processes the packet and sends it to higher layer. A disadvantage of the existing D2D communication systems is that the upper layers & lower layers always identify the packet as IP packet and processes it accordingly. As a result packet types cannot be exchanged between devices.